Thursday, December 08, 2016

Monday, December 05, 2016

Last month I finally caught up with the first of the series of films based on the Michael Arlen character The Falcon. I've yet to read any of Arlen's novels so my knowledge extends only as far as the few of the movies I've seen over the years. Adding to my lack of solid info is that I've seen the few I've been able to catch in a haphazard and random order that sometimes left me confused about who or what The Falcon actually might be. Luckily, Wikipedia answered my questions -

Gay Stanhope Falcon (later known in film and radio as The
Falcon) is a fictional character created in 1940 by Michael
Arlen. Falcon made his first appearance in Arlen's short story "Gay
Falcon", which was first published in 1940 in Town & Country magazine.
Falcon is characterized as a freelance adventurer and troubleshooter - a man
who makes his living "keeping his mouth shut and engaging in dangerous
enterprises."

The Falcon was quickly brought to the screen by RKO - 1941's The
Gay Falcon redefined the character as a suave Englishgentleman detective with a weakness for
beautiful women. The film was intended to establish a suitable replacement
character for Leslie Charteris' Simon
Templar (aka The Saint, hero of a popular RKO film series). To that
end, George Sanders (star of The Saint series)
was cast. Though Gay Falcon was the character's name in Arlen's original story,
for the film series, the character was renamed Gay Laurence - thus, "The
Falcon" became an alias, or nickname (à la "The Saint"). In later
outings, in various media, the character had a variety of "real
names," while still being known as The Falcon. Neither in films nor on
radio was the nickname ever explained.

And my confusion about the films turns out to be warranted as the series starred at least three different actors in the title role. The first two played brothers and were actual brothers! Yes , George Sanders and Tom Conway were brothers with Sanders trading off the Falcon series to his sibling when he decided to seek greener (and higher budget) pastures. The odd things you learn about old mystery films!

Looks like I need buy the DVDs of the series and stop trying to catch them when they turn up on Turner Classic Movies.

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

The cannibal sub-genre of exploitation films grew out of the
Mondo movie genre. The Italian Mondo films were documentary in nature with a
focus on taboo subjects that had often been considered too controversial for traditional
narrative tales. By using the documentary format, exploitation filmmakers could
show sexual acts, nudity, violence and even sprinkle in some racist content all
while pretending to be educating it's audience. These movies were usually
tasteless exercises in cruelty and caricatures of foreign cultures coupled with
occasional sequences that were faked or staged for the camera. Of course, they
were highly profitable but the genre waned quickly and by the mid-1970's
Italian producers were on to other things.

Enter Ruggero Deodato. Having worked his way up through the Italian
filmmaking system he had finally gotten into the director's chair and was
hunting for a new project. In 1977 he had made one of the better jungle
adventure films that had grown out of the success of Umberto Lenzi's MAN FROM
DEEP RIVER (1972). Deodato's JUNGLE HOLOCAUST had upped the intensity of the
earlier film and he decided to ratchet things up again for his new movie. He
hit upon the idea of taking the cannibal tribe idea further than before and,
inspired by terrorist activity in his home country, proceeded to make an
unforgettably nasty piece of work that would, in turn, go on to inspire the
found footage genre in the late 1990's. He's got a lot to answer for, huh?

When Adrian Smith asked me if I'd be interested in covering
CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST for the podcast I immediately said yes. And then I started
to have doubts! I was familiar with the film from having seen it almost twenty
years before but I knew it as a difficult watch. Even though I owned a copy I
had only ever rewatched the movie one time since my original viewing in the
1990's and had been disturbed enough by it on my second watch to consider
getting rid of the disc. Was I really eager to see this harsh, mean-spirited
film again? Would it still be able to worm it's way under my skin and bother me
on the deep level it had so long ago? I guess I was going to find out!

Listen in as Adrian
and I fight technology, discuss Deodato, praise Riz Ortolani, process this film's
animal cruelty and generally try to keep a good attitude as we follow several
stupid Americans into the Amazonian jungle. If you have any comments or
questions about CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST or anything else we touch on, please contact
us at thebloodypit@gmail.com and we'll get right back to you. Thank you for
downloading and listening to the show!

Monday, November 28, 2016

This episode begins with a quick look at Price's excellent TV special from 1970 called An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe and then moves into a discussion of the bizarre main feature. I shouldn't like Scream and Scream Again as much as I do!

Sunday, November 27, 2016

OK. This is far from the kind of thing I would usually post here as I can't really justify it as a normal part of the strange stuff I blog about BUT ....... This is so strange a thing to have discovered (thank you FaceBook!) and I have been completely mesmerized by it for the last 24 hours that I felt I just had to share. It adds to my fascination that I probably wandered around a Tennessee or Alabama K-Mart as a young lad while this soundtrack played in the background. Maybe it burrowed its way into my memory and only now is resurfacing as I listen. Let the holiday season begin!